Pass

verb

• Move or cause to move in a specified direction
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] Change from one state or condition to another
• [no object] • euphemistic , chiefly North American Die
• [with object] Go past or across; leave behind or on one side in proceeding
• Go beyond the limits of; surpass or exceed
• Tennis Hit a winning shot past (an opponent).
• [no object] (Of time) elapse; go by
• [with object] Spend or use up (a period of time)
• Come to an end
• Happen; be done or said
• [with object and usually with adverbial of direction] Transfer (something) to someone, especially by handing or bequeathing it to the next person in a series
• [no object, with adverbial] Be transferred from one person or place to another, especially by inheritance
• (In soccer, rugby, and other games) kick, hit, or throw (the ball) to another player of one’s own side
• Put (something, especially money) into circulation
• [no object] (Especially of money) circulate; be current
• [with object] (Of a candidate) be successful in (an examination, test, or course)
• Judge the performance or standard of (someone or something) to be satisfactory
• [no object] (pass as/for) Be accepted as or taken for
• [no object] Be accepted as adequate; go unremarked
• (Of a legislative or other official body) approve or put into effect (a proposal or law) by voting on it
• [no object] (Of a proposal) be approved by a legislative or other official body
• [with object] Pronounce (a judgement or judicial sentence)
• Utter (something, especially criticism)
• [no object] (pass on/upon) • archaic Adjudicate or give a judgement on
• [with object] Discharge (something, especially urine or faeces) from the body
• [no object] Forgo one’s turn in a game or an offered opportunity to do or have something
• [as exclamation] Said when one does not know the answer to a question, for example in a quiz
• [with object] (Of a company) not declare or pay (a dividend)
• Bridge Make no bid when it is one’s turn during an auction

noun

• An act or instance of moving past or through something
• An act of passing the hands over something, as in conjuring or hypnotism.
• A thrust in fencing.
• A juggling trick.
• Computing A single scan through a set of data or a program.
• A success in an examination, test, or course
• British An achievement of a university degree without honours
• A card, ticket, or permit giving authorization for the holder to enter or have access to a place, form of transport, or event
• historical (In South Africa) an identity book which black people had to carry between 1952 and 1986, used to limit the movement of black people to urban areas.
• (In soccer, rugby, and other games) an act of kicking, hitting, or throwing the ball to another player on the same side
• informal An amorous or sexual advance made to someone
• A state or situation of a specified, usually undesirable, nature
• Bridge An act of refraining from bidding during the auction.

Phrases 
pass the baton 
pass the buck 
pass one's eye over 
pass go 
pass the hat (round) 
pass one's lips 
pass muster 
pass the parcel 
pass the time of day 
pass water 

Phrasal verbs 
pass away 
pass someone by 
pass off 
pass something off 
pass someone/thing off as 
pass on 
pass out 
pass over 
pass someone over 
pass something over 
pass something up 

Origin

Middle English: from Old French passer, based on Latin passus'pace'.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pass?q=pass

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Spin Art was the last present she’d pass from her hands to mine before she wasn’t anywhere I could touch her any longer.  

That last Christmas, Mom-Mom spun and circled.  I was to sing in the choir on Christmas Eve but didn't get to go. We went to the hospital instead.  It was one of very few times, if not the only time, I saw Mom-Mom when she was there. 

She bought me the Spin Art toy I'd seen on the commercial. Happy children attached paper to the center of a spinning circle with walls.  Onto that spinning paper they dropped paint streams and paint tears, creating colorful, sun-burst spin paintings-- paintings where the centers bled out, stretched out, reached all the way to where the walls prevented them from going further.

My mother handed Spin Art to Mom-Mom so Mom-Mom could pass it to me. Mom-Mom, confused, started to open it instead.  When my mother took it back from her, she carefully folded the corner of the gift-wrap and re-taped the opening closed. Then she handed it to me.

I don’t remember what my brother received.  I don’t remember what my parents received.  I remember what she gave me—the Spin Art and a Snuggle Bear ornament she’d received from sending in the UPCs off of dryer sheet boxes. I remember what they bought her—a two-sided photo album for school pictures, one side for me and one side for my brother. That year’s school pictures were already there and there were, my mother told Mom-Mom, plenty of empty sleeves she could fill with pictures ‘in the years to follow.’ 

That night, when we returned home, I played with the Spin Art, dropping reds and yellows and greens and blues onto the spinning picture, smelling the sweetness of the paint, touching the warped wetness of the paper, and feeing the sink that is a wordless knowing--a blue, spun painting-- of loss.  

****

We took home saplings from school on Arbor Day.  I couldn’t plant mine at home.

Nothing grew there.  

When we went to the cemetery to visit Mom-Mom, I took the tiny tree, a tiny shovel, and some water.  Back in the row of trees, where there was a gap, I dug a small hole and planted the little evergreen.

I checked on it every time we went to visit, convincing myself it was growing.  I don’t believe it ever did.  I do not believe it ever died.  It just stayed small forever, hiding under the shadow of the larger trees, back behind the stone that said Mom-Mom in different words.

I think she was buried in a pink dress.  I remember pink because of that dress and the raspberry ginger ale. But I don’t really remember—I only truly remember the top of her head from the vantage point of the bench on the other side of the room, the bench I sat on before Aunt Jan took us to her house to get us away from the evening, the Aunt Jan who gave me raspberry ginger ale to make it all better.

At the end of the viewing, my parents picked us up at Aunt Jan’s, took us home, put us to bed, got us up, got us dressed, and we waited for the limo to take us to the funeral home on that MLK holiday Monday-- Mom-Mom's funeral delayed so we didn’t have to miss school.  

I wanted the ground at the cemetery to feel mushy—for it to give under my feet like it had when I walked to the creek behind Mom-Mom's house, under the crab able trees, winding toward a place that was mine alone.  Instead, the ground was hard—frozen-- and it hurt to walk both because of the temperature exposure to my skin and nerves and because the hardness of the ground was so impenetrable. Frozen ground did not give when I asked frozen ground to give her back to me.  

So I stood still—heard words---ash and dust--stayed as still as I could because nothing more could happen if I stood still.  Two years after my father had his heart attack, Mom-Mom now gone, nothing more could happen if I made myself invisible. Nothing more could happen if I was still enough for 'more' to pass over.

But so much more would come to pass.

Let

verb

• [with object and infinitive] Not prevent or forbid; allow
• [with object and adverbial of direction] Allow to pass in a particular direction
• [with object and infinitive] Used in the imperative to formulate various expressions
• (let us or let's) Used as a polite way of making or responding to a suggestion, giving an instruction, or introducing a remark
• (let me or let us) Used to make an offer of help
• Used to express one’s strong desire for something to happen or be the case
• Used as a way of expressing defiance or challenge
• Used to express an assumption upon which a theory or calculation is to be based
• [with object] chiefly British Allow someone to have the use of (a room or property) in return for regular payments
• Award (a contract for a project) to an applicant

noun British

• period during which a room or property is rented
• property available for rent

noun

• (In racket sports) a circumstance under which a service is nullified and has to be taken again, especially (in tennis) when the ball clips the top of the net and falls within bounds

verb [with object] archaic

• Hinder

Origin

Old English lettan 'hinder', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch letten, also to late.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/let?q=let
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/let?q=let#let-2
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Once, her clothes had fit. Now, ratty khakis and a sweatshirt draped her tall, thin frame like a bedsheet on a child Halloweening as a ghost. And like one, she'd damn near glided into the room when she'd entered, stopping at the nurse's station.

"People are worried, but what kind of God would give it to me twice?"

"When is the biopsy?" the nurse asked.

Without any detectable fear in her voice, the woman in the too-big clothing replied, "Thursday morning, but not until after my poker game."

She stood in an opening between a wall and a translucent partition separating medical staff from patients. I could only see her. Except, of course, I could also see myself. When the nurse replied, her voice held all of Too-Big's fear. "I hope you win," she told her.

I'd been sitting waiting for half an hour while I watched and listened to the interaction between Too-Big Clothing and the nurse I couldn't see. When repeat bloodwork was requested after elevated levels in January, the Physician's Assistant asked me to promise not to worry. She wasn't worried, she'd told me. I laughed to make the question go away. I knew I'd worry and told her the same. Over the course of the month, though, I'd found enough distractions between the hours of 8 AM and 9 PM to cope and wait without the ever-present fear. Approximately 97.75% of the time I listened to doctor's orders not to worry.

The rest of the time, I worried. I worried when I let myself worry. I worried out of default. I left myself vulnerable and I worried, breaking the promise I'd acknowledged with the nervous laugh, when I'd lay down to bed or when I'd wake. And anything that left me vulnerable, of which sleep itself could be counted, opened a door for every other worry, every other fear, every other head or body memory of any vulnerability. I could work to the others from cancer or from cancer to the others. One thing trailed into the next like hurled gripes in an unfair argument between bitter partners.

I was tired.

When I talked to Kim later that evening, having walked out of the oncologist's office without the resolution expected, we'd both agreed we didn't have an overwhelming feeling that something was wrong this time. Kim reminded me of how I'd been the first time-- of how tired I'd been, how after work, I'd come home, immediately hit the couch and sleep as long as I could. I reminded her that I couldn't, at that time, tie the exhaustion to illness. Rather, I had tied tired to depression coming from a vulnerability manipulated by a co-worker...a co-worker who repeatedly told me he was dying, when the truth was that I was, though I didn't know it yet. Diagnosis would come a few months later. She reminded me how the lump in my neck had worried her and how the lasting cough produced solid balls of mucus that made me vomit. I reminded her of how I'd cried in pain for weeks, facing the back of the couch, because I was embarrassed that I experienced pain I couldn't explain and that I could do nothing to alleviate, and the last thing I wanted to do was complain. The vulnerability of attention made me too small.

I thought of Too-Big Clothing. I thought of how small she was, physically, but how large she was in her presence-- her presence full of air. I thought of the beauty in her words and how her question--"What kind of God would give it to me twice?"--sounded simultaneously assured and resigned. I doubt she believed lightning couldn't strike twice. It had, already, for her. The 'something's wrong' had been hers before. And she was back there, letting the worry wait until after her poker game.

And I couldn't wait any longer. But I did...and I didn't.

Seconds later, a woman approached, paper in her hand. "You've been waiting for this," she said, before walking away without any additional information. I'd managed a "thank you" in reply, though I didn't understand the interaction.

I'd been told I could wait for results...that the bloodwork would be read and someone would discuss it with me before leaving. Instead, I had waited for results-- three sheets of paper with numbers and ranges and historic data. I knew some, but not enough. I could, however, recognize that my white cell count was still out of range.

I passed the translucent partition and leaned expectantly on the counter replying to the "Can I help you?" with questions. Had I read this correctly? What was I to do next? There weren't answers I could do much with, only a reply that the doctor would read them and get back to me.

I didn't have a poker game. I did have a counseling meeting and work and emails and phone calls and writing and distractions. I did need to let myself exist in the fear of repeat lightning, the sadness of all the other lightning with which I'd burned and, my least favorite, the anger of having let myself be treated as an afterthought, as a thing, and as unworthy of basic respect.

Though you wouldn't
know it to look
at me, I am
as small as
she, underneath
what you see--This
presentation
me is merely
the picture I'm holding
out of fear--
failure
or freedom--This
presentation
me
letting me be
less than
I am
a poker faced
player
waiting on a
win

Back

noun

• the rear surface of the human body from the shoulders to the hips
• the upper surface of an animal’s body that corresponds to a person’s back
• the spine of a person or animal.
• the main structure of a ship’s hull or an aircraft’s fuselage
• the part of a garment that covers a person’s back
• a person’s back regarded as carrying a load or bearing an imposition
• the side or part of something that is away from the spectator or from the direction in which it moves or faces; the rear
• the position directly behind someone or something
• the side or part of an object that is not normally seen or used
• the part of a chair against which the sitter’s back rests.
• a player in a team game who plays in a defensive position behind the forwards
• (the Backs) the grounds of Cambridge colleges which back on to the River Cam.

adverb

• in the opposite direction from the one that one is facing or traveling towards
• expressing movement of the body into a reclining position
• at a distance away
• (back of) North American • informal behind
• North American • informal losing by a specified margin
• so as to return to an earlier or normal position or condition
• at a place previously left or mentioned
• fashionable again
• in or into the past
• in return

verb

• [with object] give financial, material, or moral support to
• supplement in order to strengthen
• bet money on (a person or animal) winning a race or contest
• [with object] cover the back of (an article) in order to support, protect, or decorate it
• [no object, with adverbial of direction] walk or drive backwards
• [no object] (of the wind) change direction anticlockwise around the points of the compass
• [with object] Sailing put (a sail) aback in order to slow the vessel down or assist in turning through the wind.
• [no object] (back on/ on to) (of a building or other structure) have its back facing or adjacent to
• [with object] lie behind or at the back of
• put a piece of music on the less important side of (a vinyl recording)
• (in popular music) provide musical accompaniment to (a singer or musician)

adjective

• of or at the back of something
• in a remote or subsidiary position
• from or relating to the past
• directed towards the rear or in a reversed course
• Phonetics (of a sound) articulated at the back of the mouth

Origin Old English bæc, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Dutch and Old Norse bak. The adverb use dates from late Middle English and is a shortening of aback.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/back?q=back
____________________________________________________________________
I couldn't have identified the noise as screaming before. I hear words for a second but not long enough to determine what they are. That second is only long enough to recognize the sound as words. As soon as I try to listen, the wordless words turn to screaming and those screams smother, leaving me overwhelmed by their noise. Collectively, the screams are sirens receding into words spoken under water. I hear only the vibrations-- the brontide-- and they make me dizzy, distort my vision, leave me cold and drop my heartbeat from the center of my chest to the bottom of my back.

For 18 years, I heard sirens every night. When I laid in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, I expected an ambulance would run me over and grind my fat, bones, and skin into the asphalt. The hospital was only a half-block down, close enough that the flashing lights would bounce off the baby blue walls of my bedroom. That night, for those hours, there weren't any sirens. Every other night, it seemed they screamed all night long. Every other night, when my fat and bones and skin--when my insides and my outsides-- were ground down beside my breath and my voice and my sense of the ground, there were sirens. In hard spaces now, I hear sirens where there are or are not actual sirens. Maybe I'm hearing words disguised as underwater voices disguised as screams disguised as sirens. Maybe sound sounds different from behind.

When I look back or go back or find myself back without realizing I've traveled back, it is like trying to listen to these voices. At first, I hear screaming and try to stay still, hoping that maybe this night or the next one or the next day will be the day when those screaming sirens silence, when there is nothing coming to kill me, when and where I don't experience terror from outside or inside. Then I hear murmurs from under water--or something like the Charlie Brown teacher voice. The harder I try to listen, the more I'm smothered with indistinguishable sound and the harder it is to hear what's dangerous. The harder I try, the further away I go. The harder I try, the more voices I hear in the cacophony. The more voices I hear--the more the sounds touch me--the smaller and smaller I must get inside this shell of fat and bones and skin. I am so far away underneath-- I am so far back.

Back a week ago or so, I woke from a dream in which I'd been standing above the backyard at my childhood home playing a Native American Flute. The grass was growing beneath my feet and there was a minimal breeze lifting branches in soft waves. There was neither sun nor rain-- gray blanketed everything, save for the deep, deep green of the grass and the deep, reddish brown of the flute. Everything I could see looked incredibly beautiful, yet in the dream I experienced a paralyzing sadness the beauty understood. I could do nothing more than play a three-quarter time, mournful, repetitive melody. I sensed people listening, and though I never saw them, the greater my sense they were there, the greater my sadness. I didn't want to be heard, but I kept playing.

Looking back, though I'm not certain I knew what the efforts were then, I've made many efforts at being heard--many efforts at 'playing the flute'. (As a side note, when I was faced with the 4th grade decision to pick an instrument to learn, I listened to the sample record given to us in music class and decided I wanted to play the flute. I learned the clarinet instead. My mother played flute and didn't want me to play the same instrument.) In an effort to both be heard and to stop hurt, there have been multiple suicide attempts-- starting in elementary school and running right through until college. There were loud nightmares and weird behaviors and clinging and refusing to play with other kids and extreme fits of depression. There have been writings and drawings I see as exposing once I've completed them. Of course, I only see this when looking back and so I have no expectation that anyone at any time during this time would have understood all of my oddities as telling. 

I don't think I've ever stopped my efforts at being heard and that truth bothers me. I feel like I should be over it all by now. That's the general expectation of the world--get over it. An eighth grade teacher asked why I couldn't believe that people cared, why I couldn't hold on to that truth. At thirteen years old I couldn't, and twenty-two years later, I still can't. My logical brain understands that truth but my being does not know that truth. And still, when I'm heard, I don't feel heard 'right' or 'enough' or I reject being heard all together. I'm waiting on something else or something more or, or, or. Maybe it's that I don't know what I'm trying to say or express or let out. So I keep trying, but I hurt worse for the trying because I feel I've failed and then I feel shame and it all circles back again and again. It is--I am--in a constant state of conflict. So much of the work I do is internal and I still opt to go it alone.

I knew the beauty understood the sadness in the dream because the beauty stopped. While I played, it did not move. It held space, like a scene on a canvas. The wind, minimal to start, stopped. The beauty gave me permission to keep going. It held back its own energy so I could express my own. And I believed it meant the gesture.

Dark

ADJECTIVE

with little or no light

hidden from knowledge; mysterious

archaic ignorant; unenlightened

(of a theater) closed; not in use

(of a color or object) not reflecting much light; approaching black in shade

(of someone’s skin, hair, or eyes) brown or black in color

(of a person) having dark skin, hair, or eyes

served or drunk with only a little or no milk or cream

(of a period of time or situation) characterized by tragedy, unhappiness, or unpleasantness

gloomily pessimistic

(of an expression) angry; threatening

suggestive of or arising from evil characteristics or forces; sinister

NOUN

(the dark) the absence of light in a place

Origin

Old English deorc, of Germanic origin, probably distantly related to German tarnen'conceal'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/dark?q=dark

_________________________________

Truth

NOUN

• the quality or state of being true
• (also the truth) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality
• a fact or belief that is accepted as true

Origin

Old English trīewth, trēowth 'faithfulness, constancy'

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/truth?q=truth

---------------------------------

Truth be told, I have a perception of myself that is decidedly different from the perception other people have of me and that makes me feel bad because it is just as disjointed as the perception others had/have of my family and the reality of what it was to be a child-adult in that space and, truth be told, I'm not sure what perception of me is truth, my own or 90% of the inside-outsiders and that makes me question everything about who I am and how I am and whether I am and whether I should be or could be or deserve to be anything at all when I'm not sure whether what I know I KNOW  because, truth be told, I grew up being told to shut up whether there were words or actions instructing me to do so and so I questioned everything and everyone and kept that questioning to myself where it, undoubtedly, caused cancer and so, truth be told, I believe myself the cause of my cancer and when I find myself as sad as I am again, for the zillionth time, I wonder what came first, the cancer or the sad, as though as simple as a chicken and an egg, and they are, I suppose, because they are each a part of the other and knowing how parted--how siloed--the parts seem but how intertwined they are, in each moment-to-moment I fear, because I appear so parted from my family but know we are so much a part of each other, how long it will take until, bit by bit out of me will sneak the mental illness that is theirs, and the addiction that is theirs, and the hurting that is theirs, knowing full well, they are all mine as well and so, as I contemplate truth and telling, truth be told, I've no idea where to begin or whether to begin or whether it is I've already begun the process of threading together the pieces I doubt and know but doubt and then don't and toss and turn, closed off in a head, inside a body, inside a person who doesn't perceive herself as person, though the perception of others forces more questions to toss and turn and wrap around myself, but to keep to myself, as a struggle of speaking truth while still being shut up and so, truth be told, I wish I could be more sad and more angry and more hurt and more afraid because I know I can be those and yet cutoff from the depth of them because feeling wasn't something I was supposed to do or meant to do or didn't do in order to protect the person I don't believe myself to be, I swim in, expecting to truly understand feeling and, as a result to understand alive, but I guilt myself into the name-calling because this masochistic non-person swims in the pool that hurts in an effort to try to learn how to feel rather than the pool of positive because that pool is not unlike an ice lake but, truth be told, no one would believe that goes on inside me because I'm still 'shut up' and seem positive and loving and caring and all these things they tell me I am and which, in the moments I may be being them, perhaps I am, but when I try to take them after the fact, I deny just as vehemently as being called by name because, truth be told, existing isn't easy and I never expected it to be, because honestly I just don't expect except when the expectations come from the same old pool, yet it doesn't look that way to you, and truth be told, that's probably OK in some ways but I wish, I think, that the truth I told looked even more OK, even more of whatever it is you want it to be in whatever way it can lift you from the pool you may be in and drowning with pockets full of stones because, truth be told I don't want my story to end with me swimming in the wrong pool with a pocket full of stones even though, I'm pretty certain that's the amniotic fluid out of which I was born.

Rain...Reign...Rein

RAIN (noun) 

• moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops
• (rains) falls of rain
• [in singular] a large or overwhelming quantity of things that fall or descend

verb

[no object] (it rains, it is raining, etc.)

• rain falls
• literary (of the sky, the clouds, etc.) send down rain
• [with adverbial of direction] (of objects) fall in large or overwhelming quantities
• [with object] (it rains ——, it is raining ——, etc.) used to convey that a specified thing is falling in large or overwhelming quantities
• [with object] send down in large or overwhelming quantities

Origin

Old English regn (noun), regnian (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch regen and German Regen.
  

REIGN (verb)

• hold royal office; rule as king or queen
• be the best or most important in a particular area or domain
• (of a quality or condition) prevail; predominate
• (of a sports player or team) currently hold a particular title

noun

• the period during which a sovereign rules
• the period during which someone or something is predominant or preeminent

Origin

Middle English: from Old French reignier 'to reign', reigne 'kingdom', from Latin regnum, related to rex, reg- 'king'.

REIN (noun usually reins)

• a long, narrow strap attached at one end to a horse’s bit, typically used in pairs to guide or check a horse while riding or driving.
• the power to direct and control

verb

[with object]

• check or guide (a horse) by pulling on its reins
• keep under control; restrain

Origin

Middle English: from Old French rene, based on Latin retinere 'retain'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/rain?q=rain

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/reign?q=reign

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/rein#rein__20

________________________________

I am in the house trying to set up a stick bomb behind a piece of cardboard, on the floor of the kitchen, in front of the fridge. When it is time to set it off, I'm afraid (afraid as I was, and am still, to pull the paper from cans of pop biscuits. The anticipation of that biscuit-can explosion stopped me from opening the cans and sent my fingers into my ears when someone else would open them).

I go out on the front porch with the intention of finding someone else to set off the stick bomb. My father is at the edge of the porch, standing, watching it rain. My mother is on the other side, sitting, watching. It is a heavy, heavy rain and I feel terror in the rain. I expect to see terror in the rain. Neither of my parents look at me as I explain that the bomb is set up but I'm afraid to pull the cord to set it off. My father says nothing. My mother says "Some things never change" and she tells me to go in the house, but I want to keep watching the terror rain. The terror rain is loud and quiet, comforting and unnerving. I resist going in. When I do, the TV plays images containing staggering levels of violence and trauma...shootings, bombings, fires, disasters, illnesses, assaults, bullying, rapes. The images have no sound. 

I stand and watch them in the same stance as my father had while watching the terror rain. He, unlike my mother, I understand to also experience the rain as terror. My mother doesn't even seem to recognize that what she sees is rain.

I wake up from watching violence flash in images on the dream TV. I wake up replaying the images over and over again. It's just after five in the morning and the sun has yet to rise, though I have, and the animals sense the change in my breathing indicating that I am, indeed, awake. The headache I took with me to bed rises next and the cramps and pain associated with the period, which given I've only one remaining ovary shouldn't be nearly as painful, rise next.

I pull the handle to the hot water, plug the tub, watch it fill, and curse how loud water can be. Water as loud as the rain...the terror rain...the reign of terror and the reins it controls me with still.

I've just enough sun interspersed to know, on good days, the rain will end and watching the predawn sky grow out of its bruised coloration reminds me. Starting the day in the kind of dark from which I woke leaves me less hopeful. I watch the sky out the bathroom window anyway. I sink my head into the mint scented water anyway. With the fear of seeing the images again, I close my eyes anyway.

Any way I approach the rain...the reign...the reins...I'm as soaked as I've ever been. I dip paintbrush after paintbrush into the rain...the reign...to rein in, to attempt, to try to dry out, uncloud my head, voice the images, PAINt. I go to paper and canvas as some go to God. I am creator channeling Creator then at the least and, quite possibly, am Creator. Perhaps we all are. 

Images are known inside me, though, like the dream TV playing soundless stories upsetting my sound sleep, words aren't. I'm trying to collect the words in buckets. I'm watching them rain down chains I've hung in an effort to direct their fall, in an effort to control my own, because like I can't handle the wait for the biscuit pop or the stick bomb explosion, I can't handle continually getting soaked.

The sky bruise turns to yellow before it paints back into its daytime hue and I shower away bad sleep. I make breakfast, load the dishwasher, play with the dog. I take pictures of her exuding joy in the sunshine flooding in the front window. I plan to go to the flea market for new records and to a local soaperie and I do do these things, and while I find the records inside, it rains outside. And when I get home and play the first album, soaking in Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, I paint. And when I play the second record, I discover the sleeve holds a different record than the one I thought I'd purchased for a dollar. 

Again, I'm reminded, inside and outside are different but they can coexist, just as there is, nearly always, a way out of the most soaking rains...the most paralyzing reigns...the tightest reins.

Empty

adjective (emptier, emptiest)

• containing nothing; not filled or occupied,without contents,void, emptied
• Mathematics (of a set) containing no members or elements
• (of words or a gesture) lacking meaning or sincerity
• having no value or purpose

verb (empties, emptying, emptied)

• [with object] remove all the contents of (a container)
• [with object] remove (the contents) from a container
• [no object] (of a place) be vacated by people in it
• [no object] (empty into) (of a river) flow into (the sea or a lake)

noun (plural empties)

• [informal] a bottle or glass left empty of its contents 

Origin

Old English ǣmtig, ǣmetig 'at leisure, empty', from ǣmetta 'leisure', perhaps from ā'no, not' + mōt 'meeting' (see moot).

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/empty
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When I went for chemo treatments, I took along a few sheets of stickers.  Before every treatment, Kim and I would each choose a sentiment from those printed on the stickers and affix them to the bag of saline hanging ready to run for the duration of the treatment.  Perhaps the sticker would say PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or even HOPE.  Those stickers were the intentions we placed onto fluids that would run through my body.

The idea to locate, choose, and place those stickers was less idea and more something I knew I needed to do.  When I'd read The Hidden Messages in Water and looked at the microscopic photos of water given positive messages versus those given negative messages, I was amazed.  There was order and balance in the geometric arrangement of water exposed to PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or HOPE.  Haphazard, unbalanced, disordered arrangements presented in the samples exposed to negativity.  In the body given and unbalanced with cancer, negativity needed to be flushed from my system.  Gentleness, caring, and acceptance needed to take over.

This past Monday, I had an appointment at the oncologist's.  I met with the physician's assistant, despite repeatedly requesting the doctor and being assigned to the doctor each time they rescheduled me.  Much of the appointment was expected.  There was the waiting and the bloodwork (though not with my favorite tech, hence the bruise on the inside of my forearm) and more waiting and the obligatory step up onto the scale-- the scale on which I always adjust the weight in an effort to save the poor nurse from trying to appear polite by setting the slide SIGNIFICANTLY below where it's obvious my weight lands.  There was the battle with the blood pressure cuff on my fat upper arms-- upper arms that have always been very, very sensitive (pushing a single finger tip onto the skin leaves a spot that hurts immediately and lasts for what could be an hour or more).  Of course, there was also a check in on any medications I was taking, a check of my temperature, and the "Are you in any pain today?" question.  As always, the answer was no.

This is about where the regularity of the appointment fell away.  The PA reviewed the bloodwork.  Each number produces in a list fed to the computer screen minutes after blood is taken.  All of the numbers are in black unless they are out of range, in which case the number turns red, as at negative number might on an excel spreadsheet.  I had a screen full of black, with one red-- the white blood cells.

"Promise me you won't worry about this?  I won't-- I'm not worried" she mentioned as she scheduled me to come back in a month to have another set of labs drawn.  "In the middle of the winter, it's likely you are trying to fight something off.  Do you feel OK? Sore throat, runny rose, urinary tract infection, a sense that you are trying to fight off anything?"

I never know how to answer when I'm asked how I feel, particularly when it refers to physical things-- I simply don't know, 9.9 (if not 10) out of 10 times.  All I could offer as an explanation was some post-nasal drip which wasn't bothering me. 

"How about your energy level?  Are you tired?"

"I'm always tired.  I haven't slept wonderfully, as of late.  It's rare that I do sleep well.  But I also stopped taking the thyroid meds about a year ago when I didn't like how they made me feel, so it could be that the tired is related to the non-functioning thyroid too."

"That could be why you're gaining weight?  How did the thyroid meds make you feel?"

And I couldn't recall...at all...but I felt fairly certain I could, but didn't, confirm that the thyroid issue had nothing to do with the weight gain.

"What about depression? Anxiety?"

"Yes-- but they've always been an issue."

She looked at me with a look of pity before asking "Has this been going on for awhile?"

Of course it had. I'd told her they'd "always been an issue" and I'd meant it.

"Would you say for a few months?"

"No-- forever.  I don't really remember a time when it wasn't an issue for me."  After which, I knew to anticipate the next question emerging with that continuing look of pity...

"Have you thought of hurting yourself?"

"No."  And unlike the confusion over what exactly "always" meant, there was no questioning of this "No."

She moved on to looking at my throat, listening to my lungs, heart, and checking my ears.  She reminded me again not to worry about the bloodwork and that one other time post-treatment, my white cells had actually been a bit higher and I'd not been told.  She showed me back out to the scheduling area, I made the appointment, and headed out of the office.

I wasn't as worried as I'd expected I'd be leading into the appointment or even leaving the appointment.  I haven't been as pervasively worried over the results as I once was. When my neck burns or my head starts swirling with negativity in all of its ugly forms, I worry.  Anything that reminds my physical or emotional self of how I felt with cancer--feelings I was only able to tie to cancer after they told me I had cancer--raise the worry flag.  I can't, however, tell if I'm really feeling these things or if worry makes them.  I don't understand how to tell what I really feel.

On February 5th, I'll mark four years out of treatment.  Twelve days later, I'll go back to the office for another round of bloodwork, with the hope that a single red number will turn black, in some way reassuring me that I have a chance to make it to the five year mark next February.  I'm not as worried as I think I should be.  And that both worries me and comforts me.

I've mentioned before that I functioned much better while actively battling cancer than after I was released from treatment.  The empty other side, the side not patterned with the regularity of appointments and results, is a challenge.  Most people, I think, try to fill what's empty because without filling or refilling, the empty whatever can't function.  We all know this.  And so, when the depression and anxiety hang in empty spaces, I fight to motivate myself to find and use something to fill my empty self and often, that's internalized, self-directed negativity...and food.  When the depression eases some and the anxiety manifests only at specific times of day, I'm much more able to fill empty with writing or painting or creating.  I have to feel full enough to create something that comes out of me-- running on 'E' doesn't leave enough for the beauty of just the right word or the perfect material.

So maybe the right word needs to be chosen and stuck to me each day just as each week the right word is chosen for this blog.  Maybe wearing PEACE or TRUST or LOVE or HOPE will change the quality AND quantity of what runs through me.  Perhaps with those messages, I'll fill differently...in such a way that I rarely get as close to 'E' as I normally do.